By Theo Abbott

Having just finished my third and final year of a BA in English Literature at UoM, I’ve been reflecting on my time in SALC. Looking back over the past three years, some of my most enriching experiences within the school have been in volunteering as a Student Researcher in the Undergraduate Scholar’s Programme. In this blog, I’ll outline how the Programme works, my experience working within it, and how the two USP projects I took part in helped build both my self-confidence and employability.

Launched in 2019, and running every second semester since, USP provides an extracurricular, non-credit bearing research programme for SALC students who want an interdisciplinary academic challenge, separate from the coursework of their degree subject. Nevertheless, if you successfully complete the programme, it will be formally recorded on your final degree transcript!

While I can’t deny that the idea of such official-looking certification attached to my degree was what first caught my attention, it was the broad range of fascinating research topics offered by USP that sealed the deal for me.

In 2024 alone, the programme offers a collaborative project on translating literary texts for publication with Dr Monica Boria, the chance to track the history of radical activism alongside Dr Michelle Coghlan, the opportunity to conduct corpus-based research on spoken language with Dr Richard Zimmerman, and even a project on how much dating apps are worth, with Dr Łukasz Szulc.

Whether its literature, history, linguistics, or digital media that you’re interested in, there’s always something fascinating worth putting your name down for. And if you get accepted, you get the benefit of drawing on an academic’s expertise, while also having the freedom to be relatively self-directed in how you approach the challenge alongside the other students in your research team.

I really felt the benefit of this self-direction in my first project. At this point, I was only one semester into my degree, but was already feeling slightly short changed by the lack of group work offered by a literature degree. I enjoyed the new challenge of working in a team in USP so much that I ended up assuming a coordinating role in the project, taking responsibility for scheduling meetings and eventually leading both the preparation and delivery of our final presentation.

At the time, these experiences were amazing for my confidence in both decision making and public speaking. What I hadn’t realised yet, though, was how amazing the opportunity had also been for my employability. Soon after, I was recruited by another researcher in the programme as a speaker for their charity after they’d seen my presentation and recognised my potential. Since then, I’ve been working part-time for them, delivering educational workshops in schools on topics of equality and social justice.

In my second project, after having experienced first-hand the programme’s amazing networking opportunities, I took a more active approach to seeking out further opportunities and made a speculative job application to the academic lead of my project. Prior to the mentoring offered by USP, I would never have even thought to be so bold. However, two semesters working in USP helped me build the confidence to pitch myself in this way. As a result, I secured an internship offer from my academic lead and spent a summer refining my research skills while also getting paid.

With this brief glimpse into the Undergraduate Scholar’s Programme, I hope anyone interested can see it’s not only worth having the faith in yourself to apply and take on a fascinating academic challenge, but also worth bringing the same proactive attitude to the project itself, as you never know what opportunities it might have in store for you.

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